“What can I do, excellency, but try to keep you out of danger?”
“Yes, but how?”
“We must stay here.”
“Stay here? when that village is so near at hand?”
Yussuf paused for a few minutes and then said slowly, as if the question had just been asked:
“How do we know that the village is near at hand?”
“Ah!” ejaculated the professor, startled by the man’s tone.
“It was not more than two of your English miles from here, excellency, when we left the place this morning, but with such a shock there may be only ruins from which the people who were spared have fled.”
“How horrible!” exclaimed Lawrence.
“Let us hope that I am wrong, effendi,” said Yussuf hastily. “I only speak.”